


and miles to go before i sleep

by mintpearlvoice



Category: The Luminous Dead - Caitlin Starling
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Consent Issues, F/F, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Morally Ambiguous Character, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:34:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24367381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintpearlvoice/pseuds/mintpearlvoice
Summary: Gyre suffers lasting neurological effects from her sojourn into the caves; even worlds away, she feels the depths calling her.But Em will never let her go.
Relationships: Em Arasgain/Gyre Price
Comments: 9
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

Whatever's happened to Gyre- it's Em's fault.

Gyre jolting awake at three in the morning, digging in the plot of land by their villa, dirt down her pajama top because she's been eating it, cramming handfuls into her mouth. The credit card company calling because Gyre bought a dive suit, nutrient canisters, three tickets back to the rock where she was born. "I'm going to make dinner," getting out the cutting board, and slicing, methodically, into her top-of-the-line, equipped-with-sensation, prosthetic hand. She doesn't even notice the pain until all the coolant fluid has seeped out.

"Gyre- no- your hand!" Em was in the garden for a minute. Five minutes. Just getting herbs. "Look at what you've done to yourself-" and then it occurs to her. "Your headaches. Are they getting worse?"

Gyre shakes her head, quick and sharp, and then shakes her head to the same side again. The third time, it looks less like a nervous gesture and more like some kind of neurological tic. "Yes," she says at last, a harsh whisper, her eyes dark with shame. 

"Oh, Gyre. I've done this to you," Em barely manages.

"You haven't." But the answer comes too quickly. It doesn't stem the deep, sucking current in Em's heart.

The technician offers Gyre headphones for the MRI machine.

"I like small spaces," she says. And she falls asleep the moment the scan starts up. Em can picture it; the way her face relaxes a little, especially her mouth, and her hands go slack. She knows the way Gyre sleeps intimately.

She should probably stop staying awake at night to watch Gyre sleep, even if her body is used to sleeping in 90-minute intervals, even if her body is used to jolting awake because Gyre.

The hallucinations, though. The desperate attempts to get underground or underwater. It all happens at night. If she had anything like a normal sleep schedule-

In a few days, the results come, along with the information that Gyre needs to return to the hospital immediately to prepare for surgery, to discuss possible next steps with her neurologist. That's how they say it. So casually. Possible next steps. Em feels sick.

(The brain has no noiceptors. It can't sense pain. Anything Gyre feels, waiting rocking back and forth in the hospital bed, squeezing Em's hand so hard it must hurt… it's just the swelling against her skull. She can't actually feel the fungus crawling over her brain.

Mucormycosis. A fungal infection of the brain. Her immune system was lowered from the other infections. The fungus is a sort of food source for the tunnelers- and it makes victims hallucinate, act erratically, climb downwards- it makes them easier prey-

"You're going to be fine," Em says. "I'll stay with you right up until you're under. Like the neurologist said, it's a low-risk surgery, minimally invasive, you won't even need to stay in the hospital for more than a week afterwards. The scan they gave you this morning showed that the fungus is responding really well to first-line drugs, right? This is just to treat the abscess. You'll come back to me. You'll be fine." Her touch is perfectly cool against Gyre's fever-hot skin. Someone she doesn't recognize advances on her, and she struggles, thrashing wildly.

I don't want morphine, she tries to say. I don't want to die here. Please. They're all waiting for me. I need to climb further down before I can die-)

The important thing is that Gyre is going to be all right. Well, from a certain perspective. The pus is gone. She's not bleeding inside her brain anymore. Even the fungal lesions are stable, and the drugs are going to knock out the fungus entirely. But the hallucinations, the erratic behavior? The compulsion to crawl down somewhere deep and dark to die as quietly as possible? Nothing is going to free her from that.

"I'm a fucking investment heiress, you know," Gyre says when she comes out of surgery, only half-coherent from pain meds. "I could hire caretakers… Em, you don't have to stay with me. Literal holes in my brain."

Em pulls the scratchy hospital blanket over them both and wraps herself around Gyre. She wishes she were tall enough to envelop the other woman completely, strong enough to carry her around, instead of almost a foot shorter. What she thinks is: we broke each other down in the darkness. You are the only person who fully understands what a monster I am. It's like I'm wearing a suit around everyone except you, and you can pierce right to the dreadful heart of me, all of my nakedness and breath. What she says is "I'm staying."


	2. Chapter 2

(She has to go back. She has to. They're waiting for her. Eli and Jennie and everyone.

Your mother doesn't want you, Gyre. She paid you off with an inheritance so that she'd never have to see you in the flesh again. Em feels guilty- she doesn't love you, she just hates herself.

In the dark all the voices whispering in her ears will be loud and real and kind. If she can just go home, find her way down, and get her suit off? She'll never be alone or untouched again.

I need to go home. I belong there- they're waiting for me-

Things flick through her vision, but she ignores them in favor of frantic research, pacing the darkened villa. How soon can she get a suit? Who can she find to reroute her intestines? The need to burrow claws at her like an infection. Someone is saying her name. It doesn't matter. The sky is too big, and even the thought of sunlight makes her shudder, terrifies her. She keeps trying to punch herself, but she can't feel her skin, ends up watching the bruises as if they're on someone else's body. Her body won't work up here on the surface.)

Gyre is pacing, a few steps in each direction at a time. She changes her path as if navigating around imaginary obstacles, slams her fists into her thighs, makes these quiet helpless noises in the back of her throat. It's as if someone else has taken control of her body. Someone who doesn't care if she lives or dies. She keeps walking into walls, banging her head on the cabinets, unfeeling, unseeing, scratching her arms until they bleed, as fragments of sentences fall from her mouth. "I need to. Back. The cave, I need to go back down."

"Gyre," Em keeps saying, having given up the effort to keep fear out of her voice. "Gyre, look at me- listen to me, please-"

In the darkness, she moves with jerky precision, like an electronic toy glitching, and there's this horrible faint glow to her eyes. She hasn't seemed this disoriented since before the surgery. Em can't stand seeing her like this. Mindlessly pacing. Exhausting herself.

Em doesn't know what else to do. She hurls herself into Gyre, knocking her center of gravity off-balance, toppling her down to the carpet. That seems to break some sort of pattern. Gyre just stares up at her, eyes wide and unseeing. Her head twitches.

Em straddles Gyre and covers the eerie luminescence of her eyes with a hand. All at once Gyre goes still, the fight draining from her long limbs. And then… an idea. Perhaps it's her brain just comforting her with the concept of what she aches for, a wild stab in the dark, but when it came down to it? Gyre obeyed her. Her handler. Not the thing in the cave pulling at her to climb deeper, tempting her with the quiet and the dark. At times it seemed like she was battling the cave system itself to keep her girl alive. But she can win this fight again.

"Caver," she says, her voice steady and even, "report."

The reply comes at once. "I need to descend further. I need to complete the mission." Her voice sounds hazy.

There are still too many variables at play here, but there's something reassuring about getting a coherent sentence out of her. "I've frozen your suit." Em presses down; elbows, base of the neck. Mimicking where a suit would lock up. Pressure points. Veins. "You're staying right here. Understood?"

"Em." It's barely a whisper. For just a second, that uncanny glow has died down, leaving only the clearness of Gyre's deep brown eyes. "Don't let me go back there. Don't let me die alone in the darkness-" and the light flickers back to life, and she's gone.

I won't, Em swears silently. She unwraps her shawl, folds it, and ties it over Gyre's eyes.

Gyre doesn't resist- until she does, disoriented movement once more animating her stiff limbs. "Unlock my suit- let me go-"

Em tells Gyre she will not let her go. That, rather than let the cave swallow Gyre up, she would strangle her with her own hands; just to prove it, she puts her hands around Gyre's throat and pushes down,

Gyre is so limp and pliant underneath her, wonderfully still. Em can feel the flutter of her pulse. She covers Gyre's body with her own, stroking her, whispering to her. There were so many days when all she wanted to do was this. Even as a friend. Even just out of gratitude. Anything as long as Gyre was safe in her arms. Now she could hold Gyre for as long as she wanted, burrowing close to her heartbeat, no thoughts but for the weight and warmth of her. "You're mine. My clever girl, my hands and eyes. I pulled you out of the darkness, didn't I? You are a part of me. Like my soul or my teeth. Anything that wants you will have to fight me. I know how strong you are, how much you want to live, and I am never, ever letting you go."

"I want my suit off," she mumbles, scrabbling ineffectively at her pajamas. "Want you. We could be so good, Em. Down here in the dark. It knows you, you know that? It wants you just as much as I do." Her voice drops into a lower, more seductive register, a caress of sound.

"Okay," Em keeps telling her. "I've got you." She tries to be steady for Gyre, to caress her with hands that don't shake. And "This is what you would miss if you died," she whispers. "The cave can't fuck you, it can't keep you warm. I know it calls to you. But I'm the one that's holding you. I'm the one that's here." This was all she wanted those long days and nights. To crawl inside Gyre and live there. Map out the secret topography of her. Excavate all those perfect little noises that she makes-

At last Gyre whines, arches, goes still. When Em removes the blindfold, familiar eyes blink back at her.

"How long was I out? I remember you touching me- I couldn't feel anything, but then you were there."

"I'll always be here," Em says. She can't get enough of touching Gyre, resting her forehead on Gyre's, just shifting to feel all the textures of her. "How are you feeling?"

"More lucid now. I think I need to sleep…" Gyre is sort of floppy and hazy, letting Em dress her like a doll. It feels soothing to take care of her like this. To rest her head on a pillow and guide the blanket to her chin, rub the downy fuzz of hair that's beginning to grow back until she falls asleep.

Em locks the bedroom door with a voice command and laces her fingers through Gyre's. She sleeps ninety minutes at a time. Her watch doesn't buzz to jolt her awake, but she still feels what should be there. If she has to be on shift for the rest of her life- Gyre's handler, Gyre's protector- then so be it.

On Cassandra-V, the cave is deep and dark, and still it waits.


End file.
